


The Rag and Bone Man

by Bingothefarmersdog



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, But it’s also ok because they get better in canon, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Caleb Widogast-centric, F/M, First Kiss, I think this turned out sadder than I wanted it to?, Prostitution, possible triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bingothefarmersdog/pseuds/Bingothefarmersdog
Summary: Once upon a different timeline Jester and Caleb meet. In a tavern, not a prison, and neither of them are really ok.Maybe Jester can buy some friendship for an evening. After all, for the right amount of gold, Caleb’s time can be at the disposal of anyone for the night.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 18
Kudos: 115





	The Rag and Bone Man

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning! For: an NPC who’s basically every type of awful you could think of, including being a racist, mysoginistic, homophobic, abusive asshole. Also for Caleb’s _wonderful_ mental health, and self worth. 
> 
> For more spoilery Trigger Details, look at the end notes.

Mama always said they were lucky.

_“Ah, my darling sapphire...” The Ruby would sigh, smoothing the curls back from Jester’s forehead. “You have no idea how lucky we are.”_

_Jester didn’t get it._

_“Why are we lucky Mama?” She would ask, when she was very, very young. When she still thought Mama would give her all the answers._

_“Because we are safe, my little treasure.” Mama would croon, her lilting accent making the word_ little _rhyme with_ beetle _. “We are so very lucky.”_

_“Why can’t I go outside?” Jester would ask when she was a little older. When she still thought that Mama might change her mind. “I want to see things out there.”_

_“Isn’t there enough to see in the house?”_

_“I hate our house!”_

_“Jester, Jester,” Mama would say with gentle reproach. “We are very lucky to have this house.”_

_“Why can’t I be lucky and go outside too.” Jester grumbled. But she said it just to say it. She was old enough to know Mama wouldn’t tell her the answer._

_“Why don’t you hate my father?” Jester would demand when she was slightly older still. When she still thought she wanted to hurt Mama with her anger._

_“I could never hate your father,” Mama said with an injured voice._

_“I hate him for you! He was so mean to you, and he left you all alone! And I wish you’d hate him too!”_

_“I was very lucky to fall in love with your father,” Was all Mama would say in answer._

_“Why do you always say that?!” Jester finally demanded, when it all came to a head. She was bored, and exasperated, and she poured every bit of her frustration into that question._

_“Because he left you with me.” Mama said, and it was only then that Jester remembered her mother was hiding tears. “He gave me a little sapphire, and I know i’m lucky every day to have her.”_

_The anger ended there, in kisses and tears, and Jester resolved to never think she wasn’t happy with just her Mama ever again._

_“Why do you always say we’re lucky Mama?” Jester would ask softly, when she was much older still. When she still thought she’d always have the privilege of hearing her mother’s voice every day._

_“We just are, my little jewel.” Mama would answer, rocking the daughter that was almost too big to sit in her lap anymore._

_And Jester only smiled, and curled up a little tighter. She’d learned to let her Mama avoid the answer._

_“You are so lucky, my darling,” Mama said through a fog of tears on the last day of all. “You’re getting to see the outside after all.”_

_“I don’t want to be lucky Mama,” Jester had cried, clinging to the Ruby’s waist. “I want to stay with you.”_

_She didn’t say the truth really, the rest of it that she only thought. Which was that being lucky had always meant she got the opposite of what she wanted._

_“Hush, my dear.” Marion Lavorre had chided softly. “I know you don’t really mean that.”_

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to be lucky,” Jester growled bitterly to her horse as she stomped along, leading it by the bridle through the rain.

It was a bitterly cold day, darkening into evening. The town streets were muddy and wet, and the horse was muddy and wet, and Jester was muddy and wet too. The buildings around her all looked gray and drab. All wood and stones, without a nice bit of paint or flash of red tile roof anywhere. The Empire was all so boring. Jester had been sure that the world outside the reach of her little window would be so much brighter and happier, beyond the horizon she could see. Instead the Menagerie Coast had been the prettiest part of her journey.

Jester pulled her horse to a halt at the door of a tavern, all the distinctive markers of guffaws and rustic voices flowing from within. Two young men in red and gray uniforms with gold trim shouldered roughly past her, one almost shoving her into the neck of her horse, and both laughed at some private joke as they pushed into the inn. As they went in, a young lad with wavy brown hair that looked like an errand boy came out, approaching her at the bottom of the steps.

“Hello miss. Welcome miss. Welcome to the Rest and Revelry, proud servant of civic duty since 821 PD, can I take your horse?” He rattled off so fast his rote learned speech pelted over her like hail.

“I want to get out of the rain.” Jester said, somewhat sourly, while every inch of her dripped.

“Of course Miss. Yvonne has rooms available miss. Can I take your horse miss? We stable them right over there.” He pointed across the street where there was indeed a stable, which was a blaze of lights in the storm darkness.

“Fine,” Jester said, relinquishing the reigns of her horse. The boy instantly grasped them, and began chittering at the horse in a soothing way to coax it into following him.

Shaking the wet off her cloak, Jester pushed into the tavern. The interior was a blaze of lights, the air was almost hot and thick with the smells of roast meat, spilled ale, tobacco smoke, and men. The common room before her was a sea of faces, and it seemed impossible to stand anywhere beyond the door without brushing elbows with somebody. The darting figures of servers wove adeptly through the crowd, carrying pitchers full of beer and overloaded platters of food without the slightest difficulty, as if the most perfect order reigned, but Jester could hardly move without getting bumped this way or that.

When she finally made it to the bar, her cheeks were warm with exertion. The only seat available was an empty barstool tucked into the very corner, and probably deserted because it was wedged between the bar, and a booth against the wall where a group of men in the same scarlet and gold uniforms were sitting. Jester hastily took it, whisking into the offered respite and shelter with a puff of relief.

The other men in barstools with her were all roaring out for more ale and waving their arms to try and get the attention of a shrewd looking woman who seemed very busy ignoring them. Even though she appeared to have her hands three places at once, the woman’s calm never wavered, and the sharp, clever arches of her cheekbones and forehead looked perfectly collected. Perhaps because Jester was the only one not making a scene—or perhaps because her entire body was bright sapphire blue—the woman’s eyes alighted on her, and the lady bustled over.

“Evenin’ missy, welcome to the Rest and Revelry.” The woman said with curt warmth, both hands frantically busy filling mugs of ale on a serving platter at the same time, though her eyes never left Jester’s face.

“You’re very busy here!”

“The regiment’s on its way through to Bladegarden.” Yvonne said, tipping a nod at the crowd of red and gold uniforms behind Jester. “We’ll be short handed until the end of the week when they re-station. Good for business.”

“The boy outside said Yvonne had rooms?” Jester asked, while the woman blindly handed off the loaded tray to a barmaid that hustled past.

“Aye missy. That’s me. We’re crowded tonight but I can manage accommodations for one.”

“Yes. I’d like to stay the night, and have a bath please.” Jester said.

Yvonne, busily scrubbing down all the beer taps near her—all of which were immaculately clean already—shook her head. “Bed I can do; bath, you’ll have to go to the Soap Bubble. Henry keeps it open half nights in the army season.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll be wanting supper I imagine,” Yvonne went on without pausing for a single moment, and she turned to shout through an open casement in the wall behind her. “Supper on demand for one! Sealed-vintage! Can I get you a drink missy.” Addressing the last to her so suddenly that Jester was nonplussed.

“Just milk please?”

Yvonne’s eyebrow quirked sarcastically, but “Milk for one!” Was shouted through the window nevertheless.

A bowl of soup with bread and the milk arrived together, pushed through the window into Yvonne’s expectant grasp, and the woman passed them over with a curt statement of their price. Jester paid, and then as suddenly as Yvonne’s attention had fixed on her, it vanished again. A bustling youth had appeared, bearing a loaded crate full of dusty bottles packed in straw, which Yvonne was now unloading to place beneath the counter.

For a while Jester watched her, taking dainty sips of stew because it was scalding hot and she’d already burned her tongue once. Then she got interested in the bustle going on behind her, and turned in her stool so she could people-watch. Everything beyond a certain point was pretty much a jungle of bodies, and Jester watched the confusion with interest, until she noticed the men in the booth next to her were playing poker. Then Jester forgot everything else at once.

Jester loved poker.

More accurately, Jester loved _cheating_ at poker. She pulled the bowl of stew into her lap to finish hastily, watching their game in the meantime, so she’d be ready to join as soon as she was done. Almost at once, Jester started to dislike the players. It didn’t seem like a very nice game really. There were six people, though it looked like only four were in the game. An old guy with a rather scantily clad and buxom woman leaning on the back of his chair in a way that really showed her cleavage, a brawny fellow who’s unbuttoned jacket exposed the way his shirt-buttons were strained to hold back his beer gut, a young, nervous looking officer who was either really sunburned or pretty tipsy, another guy who would have been handsome if his squint eyed leer wasn’t so conniving, and a red haired man who’s undone shirt collar exposed most of his torso and also maybe not the healthiest ribs, straddling the nasty man’s legs.

Just as Jester was turning to watch there was a roar of playful anguish from the table, and Beer Gut Guy thumped a hammy fist against the wood while Nasty Guy leaned forward around the body over his lap to scrape the money pot to his side. The young officer was swearing, and his rosy face somehow also looked pale under the flush.

“Play again?” Nasty Guy asked smoothly, shuffling the cards between his fingers. It looked like oil, slipping from one hand to the other with a seductive rustle of cardboard.

Oh he was definitely a shark.

Beer Gut’s beer gut jiggled as he snorted, and tossed a silver piece into the new pot. Old Guy held up his buy-in significantly so it sparkled against the light. The young officer hesitated, looking at his own coins with guilty trepidation.

“Come on!” Beer Gut said with drunken cheer. “I’ll admit, Corliss always fucking takes the pot when it’s ripe. But he can’t take us all! We’ll get him lad, you watch. He can’t have luck forever!”

“Maybe I’ve got a good-luck charm,” Nasty Guy—apparently Corliss—chuckled. He gripped the man in his lap significantly, jostling their hips together, and nipped at the man’s ear in a way that reddened the pale skin. The skinny man shuddered, rocking with the movement easily enough and turning his face to nuzzle Corliss’s neck, but the redhead’s knuckles were white with how hard he was gripping Corliss’s neck.

“I don’t know...” the young officer protested vaguely.

He was cut off by Beer Gut who shoved a brimming mug of ale into his hand, and the Old Guy’s companion, who leaned over to delicately pluck the silver from the officer’s hand, and lay it on the table. Her movement brought the young officer’s face almost into her breasts, which were straining against the meager check of her flimsy, low cut cotton dress, and the young man blushed even brighter crimson.

“You’re sure that you don’t want to purchase some good luck for yourself, Pickam?” Corliss said with sarcastic amusement. “That seems to be the best thing for you.”

“Oh—No—“

“Splendid!” Beer Gut interrupted, slapping Pickam on the back with loud guffaws. “Yes, yes, of course! That’s it! Buy a bed warmer, laddie. They’re splendid creatures!”

The game was progressing again, and poor Pickam’s face wilted with undisguised disappointment at the sight of his cards. Jester wanted to slap him, exasperated by his terrible poker face. But really though, she was ready to slap anyone at this moment, frustration burning bright in her veins. Even Mama’s worst clients, the ones who were possessive, or whiny, or made her do stupid things that they thought were hot and she though was kinda crude, had never been so coarse to her. These three guys just seemed kinda gross.

“Call.” Old Guy said listlessly, tossing money into the pot.

“Call,” Pickam echoed, taking a long drink from his mug which didn’t seem to make him feel better quite as he’d hoped it would.

“I’ll Raise,” Beer Gut said cheerfully. “Am I mistaken or are you having a repeat tonight?” He asked Corliss.

“Call. Yes, he’s used.”

“That’s unusual. I mean Art always has Leela, but she’s his favorite.”

“Raise.” Pickam put in a little desperately, and Jester wanted to shake him. How was he supposed to bluff when he obviously had a shitty hand?! But this turn in the conversation seemed to be making him just uncomfortable enough to not be thinking clearly.

“Oh I don’t know,” Corliss said, petting a calloused hand down the redhead’s back like he was some kind of lap dog, and jostling their hips again. “He’s worth another night, if he wants to take it.”

The game was still going on, but Jester was forgetting to track its details. The leering man took a sloppy drink from his ale, and it sprinkled a few messy drops over the red headed man’s shirt. One little rivulet curled down across his collar bones, disappearing inside his shirt where Jester couldn’t see, and Jester couldn’t. stop. _watching._

“I didn’t think you went so much in the ah...bearded line.” Beer Gut said, raising without any announcement.

“This one?,” Corliss said, with a disagreeable kind of laugh. “Oh this one’s almost as good as a pussy.”

He roughly gripped a fist into the human’s shaggy hair, yanking him backward so he was sitting arched in Corliss’s lap, and Jester saw his face for the first time. It might have even been a handsome face if there wasn’t something so...broken about it. He was clean looking, maybe a little scruffy around the beard but that could have been charming in its own way. His eyes were a startling shade of jewel blue that Jester would ordinarily have itched to draw, and his cheekbones were two perfect knife edges that looked cunning, and masculine.

But he was...He was wrong. Passive. He looked all the part, he even acted it, except where white knuckles were anchoring him too hard. There was even a flicker of real fear in his eyes, while Corliss was looking down on him like that. But it was all empty. Like someone who thought their life was over already.

“He doesn’t even squeak when I mark him,” Corliss said, laughing, like the object of his words wasn’t right there. Like he wasn’t face to face with him.

Distantly, like it was happening somewhere far away Jester knew that Corliss had folded. She even knew that she wasn’t the only one watching this man yank another living, speaking creature around like they were an object. Pickam was concentrating so hard on his cards, he was going to loose all his money on a shit hand, because Corliss had all of his unwilling attention.

But it still felt like she was the only one.

“Isn’t that right, faggot?” Corliss growled. “Just pay you enough, and you’re all mine to do anything with.” He flicked the redhead’s wide-eyed, white lipped, completely unresisting face hard. It made a hollow sound against the softest fleshy part of the man’s cheek and he grunted, something jagged, and frightened, and damaged as broken glass glittering in his eyes, but he still wasn’t resisting. “They’ll all know who’s whore you’ve been, after I’m finished with you.”

Blood was roaring in Jester’s ears.

“ _Why are we lucky Mama?”_

_“We just are, my love. You have no idea how lucky we are.”_

“Hey.”

Everyone blinked in surprise and looked up at her, standing at the edge of their table. Jester had no idea when she’d decided to stand up, or where her bowl of stew went, or if she’d even finished it. All she knew was that blue eyes were glittering at her from the shadows She couldn’t even meet the look, but the hidden flash was the only important thing in her peripheral vision, as she faced Corliss with a relentlessly cheerful smile.

“I couldn’t help but notice the guy you’ve got there,” she said, with a jerky indication toward the redhead.

Corliss was just staring at her.

“He’s pretty cute...”

Gosh this was so fucking awkward! Nobody was saying anything, and maybe this had been a pretty stupid idea...Then she noticed Corliss’s hand. She’d looked down because she was kinda loosing her nerve. But that made her look at Corliss’s hand wrapped around his mug of ale, and that made her remember how his stupid fucking alcohol had splashed the redhead’s neck, and that made her look at his shirt and realize it was still damp, and all of that together made Jester’s lips tighten into a fiendish smile that was more contempt than warmth.

“How much are you paying him?” She asked, feeling the smile spread across her teeth.

“What?” Corliss asked. It was a stupid question. His eyes were too cruel and too shrewd for that. He knew exactly what she meant, he was just trying to make her feel dumb.

Jester was over it. She had her angle now.

“Your companion.” She said with unwavering sweetness. As if this entire conversation wasn’t razor edged. “How much are you paying him.”

“Fuck off, girlie.” Corliss said, and his eyes broke away from her dismissively. He looked at his mug of ale instead, taking a long drink that soaked into his mustache. Lowering the drink, he lifted the redhead’s arm like it was a napkin, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve. The redhead didn’t even react.

Oh Traveler, Jester was pissed.

“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”

“Property’s, property, skank.” Corliss said, fixing her with a glare of intense dislike that proved how false the other disregard had been. “I don’t care if you want him more, I paid first.”

“Not even if I paid lots and lots?” Jester asked innocently, holding up her coin purse. “Like fifty gold or something?”

Corliss didn’t answer that.

With dainty significance Jester set down the jingling money on the table. And here was the struggle. The contention between prideful possessiveness, and greedy calculation. _How much was the boy-toy worth to him really?_ Jester could practically hear him thinking. _Was making his point really worth more than all that easy money?_ But he’d staked his claim to the redhead now. Giving up would mean accepting the power of this dirty blooded devils spawn. But maybe...

Jester could see it click into his face in the breath between his longing look at the gold, and the hard glare he directed at Jester’s face again. Cruelty. Jester knew the twist of it well, like ice being flesh and bone.

“ _Bad egg I’m afraid,” the Traveler had drawled in her ear, after mama’s performance one time, when she’d watched through the banisters while a potential admirer tried to use his charms on the Ruby. “He’ll wash out, you’ll see.”_

_“How can you tell?”_

_“It’s just obvious, Jester. Look at the way he’s calculating too coldly. That’s a predator in hiding.”_

“Make it a hundred.” Corliss growled. And ah, there was the compromise, there was the calculating. He wanted the money most after all, but a bargain put the veneer of his control over their terms.

“Sixty”

“A hundred.”

“Sixty-five?” With carefully curated desperation, as if she was trying to hide how much she was hanging on the numbers.

“Ninety.”

“I only have seventy!” She protested. “That’s all I can give.”

It was only a very little lie. _Only the teeniest little white lie, Mama_. She really did only have seventy-five...hundred. Corliss didn’t need to know about those two extra zeros that she mentally added in silent addendum to her number. It was close enough to the truth she could reel it off without the slightest hesitation, and all of the false insecurity she could muster. Corliss bought it. For a moment she could almost see him thinking _you’re offering all your money, for one not-that-special-skinny-guy._ Then it all smoothed away, and he was trying to be unreadable again. Too bad the Traveler had told her too much shit about people. He knew everything about liars.

“I suppose that could be adequate.” Corliss made a show of considering.

Jester was appropriately desperate for his answer.

“Gimme all of it.”

Jester made a show of protesting, just to really sell it, and Corliss predictably cut her off. Gods, it was like they were acting in a play, and he knew exactly the rehearsed beats he was supposed to follow. “Seventy gold. Final offer.”

It occurred to Jester as she began to count her coins and pout that she could have played things a little differently and forced the number lower by pretending to be unwilling to pay until Corliss’s greed made him accept her lower price. But that was back to the game of power-plays, and Jester wasn’t at all certain that the thrill of watching her walk away empty handed wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the gold. This was probably the best way, all things considered. And after all, it was just stupid money. She still had like, six thousand and something...

In fact the complacency might show on her face too much. But Corliss seemed to have made up his mind. Maybe her attempts to get someone out of a blatantly abusive situation where actually kind of obvious, but whatever her perceived motivations, whether good hearted or foolish, Corliss seemed happy to take advantage of her. And them.

“Well you know the drill, faggot.” Corliss said sarcastically, wrenching on the redhead’s arm so roughly that the human was startled into giving a little whimper of pain, and Corliss dumped the hapless man to the floor. He grinned at them both as Jester darted down to help her “purchase” off the ground. “Go fuck your brood mother and make some tiefling babies.”

The next pump of blood to Jester’s brain was murderous, scorching her mind like a potent venom. Gods this guy was such an asshole! But she couldn’t do anything about it! Maybe try to think of a really good prank, but not if it was going to put this human in danger, after she’d gone to all this trouble to extract him from the poker players.

“Come on,” Jester muttered, dragging the man by main strength into following her.

The crowds in the tavern only seemed more stifling and hostile the second time though, and Jester pulled in a gasp of relief as they finally made it into the open air. Outside the rain had slowed somewhat from a drenching downpour to a fine, persistent drizzle, lamp lighters were just kindling the lamps where they hung on posts and street corners, and against the yellow light the drizzle looked like streaks of glass. Relief washed over Jester more strongly than she would have liked to admit, more shaken than she’d thought she was, and she found herself trying to cover it up.

“Wow. What a creeper am I right?” she giggled nervously. “He musta been paying you pretty good, to stick around like that.”

The redhead just kind of hovered next to her in weird, judgmental silence though.

“So um...so what’s your name?” Jester tried again. “Because, you know, I kinda don’t really don’t wanna call you..um...”

Corliss’s vitriolic slur hung like a bad smell in the open air between them, and even though she hadn’t outright said it, the implicit reference made Jester blush.

Thin, pale lips cracked apart, profiled against the shine of the swinging lamp at the end of the street, and Jester found herself watching their bow and shape. They were kinda pretty like that. A little white and ghostly, but beautiful, with how slender they were. How they curved and moved, hanging empty for just a moment, on the edge of words.

“Caleb.” The stranger rasped, like his voice was an instrument unused to exercise. “Caleb Widowgast.”

That was a nice name. He had a nice name.

“Hi! I’m Jester.” Jester said, with a forceful wall of cheerfulness defending her words, and she poked out her hand for a shake.

The redhead—Caleb—hesitated for just long enough to make her arm start to hurt from holding it up. Then he grasped the extreme tips of her fingers in his, so loose that she could hardly feel it, and shook her hand gingerly.

“Nice to meet you...Caleb.” Jester intoned, filling the awkward silence of Caleb’s handshake.

He released her hand, arm falling to his side like a dead weight, and he was back to just looking at her in watchful silence again.

“Well I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but I really need a bath after that.” Jester announced pointlessly, clapping her hands with a sharp _smack_ in the too heavy silence between them.

Caleb’s lips cracked and hesitated again, before he said, very quietly. “A bath sounds _gut, ja_.”

“Goot.” Jester parroted, grinning at her own atrocious accent, and maybe, maybe Caleb almost smiled at her. More accurately the crows feet around his eyes that made him look tired and anxiety ridden crinkled up a tiny bit.

It was good enough for Jester, who turned around sharply on her heel, and set off to go find the Soap Bubble. Or whatever it was that Yvonne had called the bathhouse. Caleb shadowed her the entire time, not saying a word. They went all the way to the end of the Main Street, where it opened out onto fields that were crowded by white military tents, with no sign of a bathhouse. So Jester was forced to turn back, shuffle past Caleb while he just stood there and watched her, then retrace all her footsteps with her newly acquired red-haired shadow following her in the exact same way as before.

“Hey.” Jester said to a rumbled young soldier who came stumbling out of the Rest and Revelry just as she and Caleb drew level with it again. “Where’s the Soap Bubble?”

The soldier boy pointed down the street in the exact opposite direction from the one Jester had taken first, and stumbled off without waiting to answer any more questions.

When Jester finally got within sight of the Soap Bubble, it seemed like a nice enough establishment. Lanterns were creaking in the wind on each side of the door, and though there were paper screens over the windows, a bright warm fireside glow emanated through the semi-opaque barrier with a promise of warmth and steaming waters within.

A gray-haired matron behind a tidy little desk glanced up as they came in, and smiled in a grandmotherly way at Jester. Then Caleb slipped around the door behind her. The old lady’s eyes flickered over him and then away so fast it was like lightening, and when she looked back at Jester her smile was still there, but something Jester couldn’t define about it was different.

“A private room for two.” The old lady said, before Jester could speak, and she turned to a row of painted numbers on a placard behind her which had little bell-pulls under them, and tweaked one of the pulls. “That’ll be a gold piece and four silvers.”

“Oh.” Jester blinked at the woman, nonplussed by the rapidity of her actions. But Caleb and the woman were just staring at her, like of course she was going to pay, and under their stares Jester was coming to the same conclusion that she was. So she dutifully drew out her little coin purse, and counted out the money.

“Much appreciated,” the woman said, sweeping the coins off the desk into a little lockbox beneath the counter, and she tucked the key away before bustling around into the foyer. “Your bath is right this way.”

They passed out of the foyer and Jester had a glimpse of what must be the communal baths in another room, where multiple wooden tubs were filling the humid air with steam. Then they went into another room, which was lined with doors down the narrow length of it, and the old matron rapidly led them to an open door at the far end of the room. Two gangly teenage boys were just ducking out of the chamber beyond with empty buckets swinging from their fists, and Jester could smell herbs and steam rolling out behind them.

At a gesture from the woman, Jester ducked into the room, and looked around. It was a simple setup—Nicodranas would have offered something better—but serviceable enough. The floor was big wooden beams with slender cracks between them that made Jester think that if water splashed in the floor it would probably run straight through to be drained somewhere underneath. A big, steel bound wooden tub about four feet high was placed in the center of the room, filled with enough hot water that it might reach up to her shoulders if she was sitting in it. Some soaps and a stack of towels and wash rags were lined up on an antique dresser at the back of the room. And there were benches with hooks on the walls above them, for discarded clothes.

Caleb shutting the door with a thud made her look at him, snapping back to herself. That strange, uncomfortable feeling was coming back, leaving her feeling off balance and ill at ease, so she quickly brightened up to hide it by doing a pirouette around the room. When she stopped and glanced again Caleb still wasn’t really looking at her, but he was in the middle of tugging his shirt up over his head so. There was an excuse for avoiding each other at least.

It was good enough for Jester, who started unclasping her cloak. Going to kick off her boots made her realize how very muddy she actually was, and she made a playful sound of triumph as she finally flung them away with a loud thud. She made it all the way to her dress, before she forgot to unbutton the clasp at the back of her neck, and it got caught around her head when she tried to take it off. Then when she went to pull it back down and undo her mistake, the button had somehow got snagged on something, and she couldn’t get it unstuck. For several second Jester huffed and fussed under her breath, then the warmth of another body appeared next to her side, accompanied by Caleb’s hesitant creaky voice.

“Do you need assistance? I don’t want to presume.”

“Yeah. It’s like, stuck on my horn jewelry or something.”

As the shrinking brush of human fingers plucked at her dress, Jester surrendered the bunched up fabric with a grumble. The man next to her was extremely gentle, and she hardly felt any tugging, as he picked at the tangled button. In a moment the tension went slack, and she heard Caleb step away, so she finished discarding the dress. Caleb was standing naked, and awkward about it when Jester turned around, but nudity was hardly an embarrassment in Jester’s world, and she just smiled at him brightly.

“Thanks!”

“Of course.”

Tail swirling about her ankles Jester darted round to grab the soaps and a couple rags from the dresser against the wall. “Now we can get Steamy...” Jester purred in the bottom of her throat, deep toned and lascivious over the baldly suggestive words.

Caleb looked like he had some kind of reply lodged in his throat, but Jester didn’t wait for it before tumbling pellmell into the bathtub. A wave of water splooshed up over the side, and she rose to the surface with splutters of laughter. Then the soap skidded out of her grasp, and she uttered a squeal of alarm before diving after it. When she’d finished scrambling after the soaps and made as much noise and silliness as she could muster, Caleb was joining her in the bath.

He still looked a little like duchess-whats-er-name’s dog, tiptoeing around in the basin of the fountain outside the chateau. (One of mama’s clients that Jester remembered almost nothing about now, except that she’d owned a very tiny poodle). The spoiled lap-dog had taken every step gingerly, legs raised comically high as it moved, like it would be supernaturally levitating above the water if it had the ability to choose. While Caleb still didn’t seem completely comfortable, he was there though, and Jester chose to believe that he would get cosy and start to enjoy himself soon.

Minutes passed in deep silence however, while Jester washed her hair, and Caleb sat in the water drawing shapes against the surface with a finger swirling beneath the water. “Here,” Jester said, dumping the soap and a rag into his hands, in a last ditch attempt to get him out of his shell. “Scrub my back for me.”

Dutifully, Caleb started to obey. Jester might have even enjoyed it, if they’d been in different circumstances. Caleb was good with his hands, and he worked over her skin with his fingers in a hypnotic way that was very like a massage. Maybe not the deepest-tissue one she’d ever gotten, but still it was relaxing. Except that he was so quiet! She’d given him something to do behind her, because he seemed so much less comfortable when she tried to look at him. Only that wasn’t helping things either, because now she couldn’t see him, and no longer had an avenue to gauge what he was thinking.

“Ughhh,” Jester groaned, throwing her head back dramatically so that her horns jostled his fingers on her shoulders. “Oh my gosh, this is so awkward! It’s not like I’m gonna kill you if you talk to me! I know you’re not a mute.”

“Is that...something you would like me to do?” Caleb asked carefully.

“I mean yeah. ‘Cause like, I wanna know about you, and be friends and stuff!”

“Oh.” Caleb said, with extreme hesitance in his tone.

“We’re also naked in a bath together. We’re there. We’ve reached that point.”

“Most people don’t really pay to make friends with...people like me.” Caleb murmured.

“Yeah if they’re bigoted assholes.” Jester said. “I like hanging out with ‘people like you.’” Repeating his words made her nose wrinkle, unable to see the distinction he seemed to. After all, sex workers were just like everyone else. They were people too.

“So you paid seventy gold, just to make friends with me.” Caleb asked, a sarcastic edge of humor in his voice.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s a lot of money.”

“How much to people usually spend? What was that other guy paying you?”

“Corliss is a little different.” Caleb answered, some of the guardedness coming back. “He pays more than most.”

“What does that mean?” Jester asked, eyes narrowing where Caleb couldn’t see.

“Well, if you’re persistent Watchmaster Gelid will pay a base rate for the workers that stick around, if they’re quiet about it. But Corliss likes it rougher and most won’t put up with it, so he pays for himself. If you play your cards right you can get money out of both of them.”

“How much was he paying you.” Jester asked again. Softer, more insistent.

“Three silver.” Caleb answered, and for a moment just that broke Jester’s heart, before he added, “per hit. Five if they bruise.”

That. Was disgusting. Jester opened her mouth to reply, then found nothing came out, as the full effect of his words swept over her with a split second delayed reaction time. And then the cruelty of that setup knocked her breathless.

Of all the things to do, paying per hit—per bruise—was stomach churning. In Jester’s world good sex workers got paid for their charm, their humor, their allure, their confidence. Whatever chameleonic personality made them irresistible to everyone. Pleasurable to spend time with, easy to move for, difficult to resist. Jester’s mother was paid to be herself, to be beautiful, and exotic, and witty.

In Caleb’s world you got paid for how good of a punching bag you could endure to be.

It took every bit of a that seductive connection and killed it dead. Made everything but the body cheep. All that mattered was how injured you could afford, or were forced to let yourself be. For one moment Jester imagined passing an evening like the one Caleb was describing. Taking every strike with a knowledge of its monetary worth. Knowing that every bruise was more money in the pocket, that if you could just endure one more, and one more, and even one more still, that was so much better gains. Every violation of boundaries, every crossed safeguard, every increasing injury meant getting paid just that little bit extra. In that scenario, Jester could only imagine how easy it would be to go to far, and get seriously hurt on purpose.

No wonder so few courtesans were willing to spend a night with Corliss. It meant letting a despicable man own your well-being for an evening. The real question, the one Jester wasn’t even sure she really wanted to know the answer to, was: why did Caleb? He’d clearly been uncomfortable with it, Pickam and Jester too. Even Corliss had displayed quite plainly that he knew how uneasy Caleb was with the way he was being treated. But Caleb had put up with it. More than once.

“So how much did he pay you?” Jester asked in a small voice?

“ _Was_?”

“How much,” she said again, “did Corliss usually pay you.”

 _How many hits did you take_ , was the unspoken question she was basically asking.

“Five gold.” Caleb said, the numbers meeting the air cold and truncated. “And nine silver.”

Jester wanted to hit something.

“Why?” She demanded, voice hot and heartbroken before she could pause to think about it.

“Why?” Was all Caleb said in response, just repeating her words in a cold echo.

“You’re not invincible! That’s a really dumb way to earn money, and he’s an asshole person! It’s stupid!”

“Stupid.” There was something dangerous in Caleb’s voice, but Jester couldn’t find it in herself to notice it.

“Yes! Why would you do that? It’s so stupid!”

“Because not everyone can afford to waste seventy gold on a tavern whore for one evening!”

The venom in those words burned Jester’s ears and her caustic retorts died in her throat. She felt as effectively punished as a slap, cowed into silence, muzzled by agonizing speechlessness. It was so barbed. Like an accusation, a line in the sand between him and her, created by her plentiful coin and maintained by his scorn of both her and it. He was disowning her friendliness, and the accusing force of that scorn cracked over her like a whip.

But it wasn’t just his resentment that hurt. It was the derogatory connotations aimed toward himself that silenced her too. But that was distressing in a different way, being forced to witness the careless way he also insulted himself. It felt as graphic as if he’d pulled out a knife to cut his own wrists right in front of her.

Jester curled up guiltily, as Caleb’s hands disappeared from her shoulders. Bitter silence held their chamber in a tense stalemate, and Jester just watched the bath water lap at her knees, while her eyes burned. The silence hurt, but she couldn’t think of a way to fill it. There was never enough to fill it, in the end.

“Jester...” Caleb said, so softly she could hardly hear it.

“I’m sorry...” she whispered.

“Jester.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t really know anything.” She laughed haltingly—because that’s what Jester did when she really felt like bursting into tears instead—and she scrubbed a wrist across her eyes as she hiccuped. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“ _I_ shouldn’t have said anything.”

Caleb’s eyes were downcast when she turned around, studiously examining the bath water in front of him, and he smiled wanly at it instead of her. “I am—eh—a fuckup you know.” He said, gesturing awkwardly at his head, as if it exampled everything he was trying to explain about himself. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”

Jester stared at him, and had no idea how to say even a tenth of the things she wanted to tell him. That she was sorry, that his forgiveness didn’t make her feel one whit less guilty. That her mom was a fucking courtesan, that people paid hundreds of gold just to be in the same room with her, that Jester knew pretty much everything there was to know ever about sex. That she was an only child, that this was the first time she’d ever had a chance to talk to a cute boy, that she didn’t really know anything about anything.

“I don’t think you’re cheep,” were the words that met the air instead, surprising even herself, because she hadn’t had a chance to think them before they were audible. But once she said them she realized she didn’t want to take them back, and she groped to find his hand under the water, giving it a squeeze. “Everyone has something you shouldn’t try to buy. I didn’t pay enough for it.”

A flash of blue eyes glanced at her face, and Jester kind of hated how full of doubt they were. It was like he was asking her, with just a look, how or what she meant. The distrust made her smile at him, the reassuring kindness softening her features. Just as a sickroom would have made her put on a bedside manner, Caleb’s wariness made her act harmless.

“Should I wash your back now?”

Caleb barked out a laugh.

<><><>

“Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.”

“I Dare you...” Jester paused, chewing her lip as she struggled to think of a really good prank. “I Dare you to speak without your accent for the rest of the game.”

“I don’t have an accent.”

“Yes you do! You totally do!”

“I am terrible at accents.”

“Just try something normal. Like me.”

“I’m not sure your accent is normal...”

“Just try!” Jester said, rolling her eyes with exasperation.

“Hallo. I. am. a’taulking. like. Jeester.” Caleb said, every word painfully slow and awkward. It was horrible.

Jester loved it.

“Yes!” She said, tail perking at attention in her excitement. Caleb’s eyes crinkled with amusement at the movement.

“Yees I am a leetle blew gurl, who has a totallee nomal accent.” He went on, butchering his words even worse.

“That’s so good, you’re doing me perfect!”

“ _Ja_ , weel I guess I am just veery good at ‘dooing peepul.’” Caleb said, grinning over the innuendo with obvious satisfaction at the delighted response he expected to receive.

Jester squealed with pleasure and rolled about on the bed to express her enjoyment. They were lying side by side with their legs hanging off the edge of the mattress because that was the only comfortable place to sit. While the Rest and Revelry was obviously honest and well-to-do, their rooms were only functional. Besides, playing truth or dare in bed only made it feel more like a sleepover.

“Ok ok ok, my turn. You have to dare me.” Jester said impatiently, rolling over on her stomach and propping her chin on her fists.

“I Dare you...” Caleb deliberated. “I dare you to eat the last donut with no hands.”

“Aw, that’s gonna be so messy.” Jester said, making a show of pouting.

Caleb slapped the last pastry down on the blankets between them. The next few minutes were spent in giggling hilarity, as Jester made a show of crossing her hands behind her back and floundering all about the bed like a whale. Caleb was almost wheezing with laughter, hands clutching his half starved ribs, and Jester was euphoric with the achievement of making him smile finally. Then he wasn’t quite laughing anymore, but he was looking at her across the crumb strewn bed with that mischievous laughter still hiding behind his mouth, and his eyes looked so blue it took Jester’s breath away.

“Truth.” Her companion decided in the following silence.

Jester looked down at the quilt between them, and suddenly knew the one thing she really wanted to ask. “Why stay?” _With Corliss_ , they both knew she meant. The silence rang with void, and Caleb didn’t even move a muscle.

“I will choose Dare.” He said.

“I Dare you to tell me why.”

Still no answer, and Jester knew none was coming. It wasn’t enough. Her openness, her charm, her friendliness. Just like this children’s game, where only fragile rules dictated the players to adhere. And if Caleb stopped playing, there was absolutely no plausible reason for him to confide in her at all.

“Would you tell me secrets if all I did was Dare you?” Caleb asked, crooking one Auburn brow up ironically.

And he asked it like a rhetorical question, something sarcastic and self evident, but Jester chose to meet it like it wasn’t. Because she was tired of silence. She was tired of being alone, and full of thoughts which no one could hear; and maybe a complete stranger who’s time she’d bought like it was a grocery item was a pretty poor choice of recipient. But the shape of this strange interaction had been charged, and unexpected, and too intimate from the beginning. Ever since she’d watched ivory lips whisper a stranger’s name under the halo of backlight from a nearby street lamp, they’d been doing nothing but searching for the other.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been grateful for anything.” She whispered across the rumpled bedsheets between them. “I think I’m really a pretty terrible person you know? All my life I’ve been resentful of the best parts of it. I never appreciated the good things I had. And now...now I guess I wish I said ‘thank you’ more. I really was lucky.”

For one moment Caleb didn’t answer. And his silence was unexpectedly terrifying. Then he leaned forward, and Jester looked up to find those shattered ice chips for eyes staring back at her, pinning her with weight. “I will tell you Truth after all,” he whispered. “That makes two of us.”

They were so close. And suddenly it meant something entirely Other. Jester had no idea why this secretive stranger was becoming so magnetic to her. It was like he was the only real person in a world filled with one-sided copies. Like she was meant to tell him these secrets, and meant to listen when he told her his back. Meant to find a destiny together, meant to see each other more than once. Meant to be together, and it didn’t matter of that was platonic or romantic, the fact that their lives were intertwining would happen all the same.

And in that moment his eyes were so blue, and Jester was...Jester was intrigued.

“Can I tell you something else?” Jester whispered into the shared air they were now breathing.

“Truth or Dare.” Caleb said, and one whole side of his angular face looked fire edged, the way the lamp threw light on that side, and shadowy darkness over the rest.

“I’ve never kissed a boy.” Jester confided instead of explicitly choosing Truth. “Or a girl. Not ever, ever, ever.”

“I’ve kissed a lot.” Caleb whispered back, choosing Truth in just the same way. “More than I wanted to.”

“If I dared you to kiss me right now, what would you do?” Jester asked, breath strangely shallow while her heart rate picked up. Were they even playing the game anymore? Their flirtations were certainly stretching it. Something about all this felt so weird, but also fast and exciting. A good weird.

Caleb swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing while he looked at her mouth. “I would enjoy it.” He admitted in a raspy whisper.

“Yeah?” Jester asked. She was barely four inches away from his face now. His eyes were so blue they looked otherworldly.

Jester leaned forward and kissed him.

It was a nice kiss. Not really at all how she’d imagine first kisses would be. It was aligned properly because Caleb obviously knew how to fit his mouth with hers, and dry because Jester wasn’t sure how to get to the making out part. But nice. His stubble was sort of rough, but not to the point that it actually hurt, more like a warm scratch really. At first it just felt like pressing their faces together, but then Jester figured out the lips part. When she tried a sort of nibble, but without any teeth, Caleb made this soft little sigh. And it really wasn’t anything more than a careful exhale, and a gentle tilt to his chin that made them line up a little better, but it was still really nice.

He pulled his hand up from somewhere, and Jester could feel the rasp of little callouses and dry skin on his fingertips as they brushed along her jaw, which was nice too. It felt like he cared, strangely. Which was weird, because Jester hadn’t expected such a chaste kiss to feel so intimate, but somehow it was. Neither of them had even used any tongue yet, but somehow Jester felt way more vulnerable than all her books had lead her to think she would be, without that intimacy.

It was all sort of better than nothing and less than perfect until she opened her eyes. She didn’t know why she looked at him. After all it wasn’t like she could see much of his face this close, and doing it kind of felt like ruining the moment. Or maybe...stepping away from it. She had to have her eyes closed to focus on it, or the magic was gone. But she did open her eyes, and she did look at him, and then the soft, curious, selfish part was over. She knew he didn’t want it.

She had no idea how she knew that, because he wasn’t frowning, or hesitant, or anything. The way his lips were moving felt nice, and that cradling hand on her jaw wasn’t the least bit shrinking, but somehow without her eyes closed she could see the ruse in it. And she knew. “ _I’d enjoy it_ ” he’d said, and maybe that wasn’t a lie, but not the whole truth. His closed eyes gave it away. The way he kept them tight shut for just a moment after she’d pulled back from the kiss.

He couldn’t look straight on at this moment either.

“Why’d you stop?” Caleb asked, opening his eyes to look at her, after he’d just...sat there for a moment.

“Only curious,” Jester deflected sweetly, sitting up and taking shelter behind her sketchbook, clutched tight to her stomach. “That was a nice kiss.”

Caleb’s brow crooked, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, and his blue eyes darted at her mouth again. “That’s all you want?” He asked blankly.

What _she_ wanted. Not him. Always about her. The bath, the game, the secrets, the kiss, all exclusively for her. Because she’d paid seventy gold for him to make her night, and he couldn’t forget it. Jester could see the tension now, denied the release of an expected more. The anxious pressure. Something not pleasant, not enjoyable, not even remotely related to her, that urged him to keep going.

He wanted to pay her back.

Oh Traveler, this boy she’d kissed was maybe a lot more fucked up than she’d realized.

“Yeah.” Jester said, smiling because her heart felt a little fragile at the moment, and she’d really rather cry. Caleb was so damaged. And it hurt to look at. “Just that, please.”

Caleb was still staring at her mouth, openly fixated on it, but Jester pretended not to notice. She pretended not to see him at all, in all his ugly truth, while she smiled tightly and turned to tuck herself in bed. Caleb seemed to give up after a moment, settling down at her side, so they were both shoulder to shoulder, looking at the ceiling. Her lips were still tingling, as she settled. She didn’t hear him fall asleep.

<><><>

He tried to sneak out in the morning. Jester felt the bed jostle, and the way he hissed at the cold air on his skin, but both were obviously slip ups in an much stealthier intended exit. He was pulling his boots on when Jester turned over, opening her eyes to watch him. And even though he obviously knew she was awake, and he’d been caught, he didn’t look remotely guilty.

“You’re leaving?”

“ _Ja_.”

“Even though we had such a fun sleepover?”

“You were so charming, Blueberry.” He said, with a handsome smile that didn’t look remotely real.

Jester bit her lip, picking at the covers. “You really won’t stay?”

“I have a living to earn.” Caleb said, straightening up with his boots laced, and rolling his shoulders as if to shed a burden from them. A hole was yawning open in Jester’s stomach as he walked toward the door. This all felt too soon, too cold, too rushed. They weren’t meant to part ways yet.

“I’ll pay you a gold for breakfast.”

Caleb’s fingers froze on the door handle, shoulders tight again.

“And a gold for lunch.” Jester went on. “And a gold for dinner.”

Suspicion clouded those blue eyes as they turned back around, and Jester met them, as uncertain of herself as he appeared to be. He shifted from one foot to the other. Opened his mouth. Closed it. “Why would you do that?” He finally asked softly.

“Because I’m lonely.” Jester said. “And I’d rather pay than have Corliss hit you.”

The two final Truths of their game hung ringing on the air, neither daring to break them. Caleb just looked at her, and she just looked at him. And he didn’t even say yes or no.

Then Jester laughed, kicking the covers back. The spell of honesty was over. And Caleb watched her skip about the room while she dressed with careless glee, an unreal smile of his own hovering about his lips. They went downstairs, and no one looked at them askance over breakfast. Strangers only saw two people, holding a fork battle over their shared plate of pancakes.

Jester won. She knew Caleb had let her.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic deals quite heavily with elements of non-con, as Caleb’s sense of autonomy and lack of boundaries is deeply suspect. Both discuss prostitution, and unhealthy sexual practices at length, including abusive behaviors. There is one sentence that mentions cutting. Homophobic/mysoginistic slurs like whore and faggot are both used more than once. Jester asks Caleb to bathe with her, and kiss her, and while she doesn’t take advantage of him, her requests are still ambiguous, and may not have been ok to make under the circumstances.


End file.
